Almost half of Chinese adults read books in different forms and about 25 percent of readers — some 220 million people read electronic media. Of these, almost 120 million people use their mobile phone to read. And almost 25 million people only use their cellphones to read books.

These numbers seem large, but in relation to China’s enormous population, less so.
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We know people aren’t particularly cooking out of those books,” Goldin says, “so it’s the equivalent experience. It’s people buy the book to have the book, to show off the book, to enjoy the book, to be enraptured by the book,” but only maybe to make one of the recipes.

These so-called “termination rights,” which let authors break contracts after 35 years, have already made the media thanks to a court squabble between the Village People and music studios. On the book front, publishers and agents are staying mostly mum even though the bestseller lists from 1978 reveal some very big names eligible to reclaim their work – Stephen King, Judy Blume, John LeCarre and so on.

I would like to see some of these authors, with little to lose, try some new form of distribution with their work. Would be interesting, to say the least.

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